


Purple Pens

by Alphawulf



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: I fricken love this au it's gonna be the death of me, I had to contribute in some way, I stole headcanons from tumblr for this, I've seen a lot about her being a dryad and not enough of her being a seer so this happened, Urban Magic Yogs, like the xephos candle thing even though its barely mentioned or explained, oracle!nano, this story is a lot of me bsing about seer's abilities and how they work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3062684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphawulf/pseuds/Alphawulf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nano's life as an oracle for the city, and how she met Lal.</p>
<p>(Redone cause ao3 cut out the middle five pages, at least from what I can see)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Pens

Her visions began at age seven.

Often, she would awake from a dream like state, after viewing glimpses of peoples homes, of conversations she was too young to understand, seeing different miscreants within the city, to a teacher scolding her for drifting off  _ once again _ ,  words scrawled in purple ink across her paper and arms. Sometimes when the unfamiliar images faded, a teacher had already tried for minutes to wake her so she would pay attention.  And once, she had suddenly realized she was sat in an empty classroom, the other students long since dismissed, the teacher looking relieved that she was up.

It was so bad by the end of that year, her parents were contacted and they had a talk with the principle. She wasn’t allowed to be in the the conversation, although she could have helped, could have told them that it didn’t feel like dreams or sleeping, but adults never listened to her. 

That night, her parents would encourage her to get more sleep, one staying around until she drifted off to be certain, but the bouts of odd behavior in class didn’t change frequency.

Once, though, she had complained about a particularly nasty ‘dream’ where a car, a rusty red one that kind of looked like the neighbors’, crashed into their regular grocery shop. Her parents helped her forget about it with hot chocolate and cartoons, but a few days later when they saw on the news that a rusty red car had indeed crashed into said store, they were intrigued.

They took her into see a professional, a mental health doctor, fearing their daughter ill. The doctor, however, after hearing the symptoms, told them to wait, he would be back in just a moment. She just kicked her legs about, humming a little tune she discovered in a ‘dream’ (that’s what her parents called it), and when the doctor returned, he was accompanied by a second doctor. This one smelled better, Nano had thought, a more wood-y smell, like a fireplace, instead of smelling of clean, of an office like the first one. 

He introduced her (the name long forgotten by the fickle nature of memories) and beckoned her parents outside. At first they seemed like they would complain, but he assured them that the new doctor always helped with cases like these, and it started with a one on one chat with the child. 

Soon it was just her and the new doctor. She asked about Nano’s “daydreams”, even putting air quotes around the word, and she happily spoke of them. The doctor listened, actually  _ listened  _ to her, unlike her teachers and parents.

“I would say you’re quite the seer.” Nano complained that she wasn’t really a seer, cause her right eye was always kinda blurry so how could she  be  a _seer_ when she couldn’t _see_ well? The doctor explained, very briefly, about fae and of oracles specifically, and Nano’s eyes widened. 

She had asked the doctor if she was a fairy, and the doctor smiled, saying she was but a hedgewitch, and that’s when she called Nano’s parents back in, and went more in depth about magic and the fae of the city, telling them how witches and seers and somesuch can come from non-magical parents, the city humming through their veins, granting them what they may have gone without elsewhere. Nano felt like humming, feeling more complete, knowing this about herself. Her parents were incredulous,  ‘ _ if there’s magic in this city, how come we’ve never seen it’ _ and she said they weren’t  _ looking hard enough.  _

They didn’t say anything against it, and she handed them her card, saying that they could call for any reason. Life could be quite difficult for young seers, she knew this, had seen many struggle through their child and teen years. She smiled warmly as they left, as her parents gave her funny looks.

She never saw that nice doctor again. 

They ended up moving out of city, to a small town an hour and a half away. Her ‘narcolepsy’ as they insisted on calling it seemed to get better, but Nano became more secluded, feeling like something was missing, something  _ big _ .  She didn’t feel like herself. 

It all came flooding back after a few years. The emptiness was once again thrumming with the pulse of the city, finally finding its lost oracle. The visions came back, and they came back hard. They were much more frequent, making up for lost time. The words she had always found scrawled across her skin in her favorite pen, purple, were overlapping and messy, and after a week, she awoke, gasping, and saw that her skin was red and splotchy, scratched raw, hand clutching her poor pen, out of ink. Her parents bought her more pens when she asked, watching their odd, definitely-not-magical child prophesize about neighbors’ actions, and football game outcomes, criminal activity, and even the lotto numbers once. 

She had been so distracted by the onslaught of visions during those hectic years that she hardly noticed her right eye failing her more and more.

By the time she started uni, moving back to the city where the visions lessened, the city pleased by her return, her proximity, she had grown used to her right eye being a bit odd. She wouldn’t use the term ‘blind’, although her parents were quick to. It just wasn’t true. Sometimes when she was walking down the street, someone across the street would catch her eye. If she turned her head she would swear she saw that they had antlers, or a tail, or wings. If she closed her left eye, the shapes would become more pronounced, although everything else, the buildings and normal people, would fade to black, faes’ supernatural extremities glowing brightly. 

It was a good way to differentiate between humans and glamoured fae. 

Nowadays, when she had visions, her brain would overload, images flashing by rapidly in her right eye, her left still seeing her immediate surroundings. It rendered her completely immobile, except her eccentric right hand, scribbling away all the important things along her skin.

It was normal life, for her anyways. Attend uni, scrape by in each class (she just always had to have visions during the  _ important bits  _ didn’t she?), go back to the dorms, remember to eat and have pens close by in case the city had more to show her. 

 

~*~*~

 

Her uni days now a thing of the past, she lives in a small house, far from the innermost parts of the city, but close enough that it didn’t feel the need to flood her. Some fae come to her, and if she is able to help, she exchanges prophecies for herbs and ingredients, doing a bit of dabbling into witchery, although it never really goes according to plan. Some humans come to her too, family usually calling her a fraud, and she just smiles at their naivety, helping, always wanting to help, and not about to send away a good source of income. Beats trying to find a real job, anyhow.

She’s careful to not fall into someone’s debt, always trying to swing deals in her favor. She tries not to choose any courts over others, although she tends to stray away from the garbage court, after they were particularly rude in asking for a prophecy (who asks for one by a note tied to a brick thrown through a window? Ugh, what assholes). 

 

Today, she’s following a particularly interesting vision that struck her the week prior. She saw a sleepy street, and caught a glimpse of a man talking to her, about a...homunculus? The man had hair the color of… with a face that looked like...augh, she can’t remember, the details are fuzzy now. But, if she finds the street, then maybe it’ll jar her memory. She has been looking since she had the vision, it felt like a particularly important thing, no matter how trivial it seemed at the time. The city showed it to her for a reason.

She walks along the sidewalk, past quiet homes, the weather not inviting to children this time of year. She adjusts her scarf, pulling her sleeves down to bunch in her hands, the cold wind trying to bite her fingers. No snow yet, which is a surprise, but it’s sure to come sooner or later. She smiles at the trees clinging to their golden leaves still.

Wandering through residential areas is less dangerous than if she were to wander through the beating heart of the city, where the courts’ reaches are more centralized, so she felt safe enough to explore, even though she could be struck dumb at any moment with more visions. She couldn’t feel the presence of garbage around, couldn’t see any cigarette butt circles, or any telltale gargoyle scratches along buildings. Nothing smelled of the sea or of swamps. She felt safe this far out, fairly sure that their dirty claws didn’t reach this far out, that even if she did have visions right now they couldn’t snatch her up before she became aware again. 

When she finally drops that train of thought and looks around, she realizes she’s gotten herself a little lost. It’s fine, she can just turn around, and walk that way for a bit til she sees something familiar. 

As she turns, the city bombards her, hand immediately finding the pen in her pocket.

 

When she comes to this time, she’s pleasantly warm, nose and ears no longer stinging slightly from the cold. She blinks, wondering how she got home, she doesn’t remember a thing, when she hears a man’s voice.  _ The  _ man’s voice. 

“Oh good! You’re awake.” He says, walking into the room, running a hand through his brown hair.  “We were worried for a bit there! You just fell over while walking by. Looked like you hit your head on the ground there. You feeling ok?” He speaks somewhat fast, setting down a cup of tea next to her.

“M’head doesn’t hurt too badly.” She shrugs, checking to see if he’s fae with her right eye before picking up the tea. She realizes she’s under a blanket, an intricate crest in orange and gold in the middle. The tea is nice, warm, and it helps her focus more. The room is quaint, she notes as she sees the man sit down in a chair nearby. There’s quite a few candles about, filling the room with many different smells, yet they seem to work together, the air not too laden with scent or one smell clashing with another. The man’s in a burgundy sweater, the sleeves just a bit too long, and that’s when her brain catches up. “We?” 

He looks a bit startled, his own cup of tea halfway to his lips. “Yes! Honeydew and I saw you fall-Oh, where are my manners. I’m Xephos.” He holds out his hand.

“Nano.” She takes his hand and gives a firm handshake before sipping a bit more tea. She’s about to ask where this Honeydew fellow is, but he starts talking first.

“Was it a prophecy?” His question startles her, and she’s shocked into silence. He motions to her arms, which she realizes are once more covered in ink. She simply nods. “Knew someone who was an oracle, back in highschool. Always felt bad for him. They always seem to happen at odd times, huh?” His expression is soft, understand, and she can’t help but blurt out that he didn’t seem like a magic-knowing type. He laughs at that.

“No, I guess I don’t. But you don’t either.” He retorts with a small smile, and she can’t argue with that. 

“I had a vision. Last week.” She finds herself saying before she can think about it. “You were in it.” She explains.

“Oh?” He seems more fidgety, and she finds her eyes narrowing.

“Yes. The city wanted me to seek you, and I think it has something to do with a, uh, hom...hum? Homancules?” No that didn’t sound right. He seems to understand though, eyes appearing even more worried than she’s seen so far.

“That. Well. It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” She retorts, leaning back in the chair, arms behind her head. He nods, then talks of how he tried to make a homunculus(Lalna, he says he was gonna name him), but ended up making several instead(referring to them as the Lalnæ). She’s amazed by the amount of magic he has to have made that work. One that he calls Livid resents this household and Xephos himself, hating the fact that he’s forced to live a less than human existence, hates the magic that made him, and vows to help regulate and restrict magic. He hasn’t seen that specific Lalna for months. But other’s have, and they’ve kept him updated. At least Livid seems to be doing ok for himself.

But another one of them is missing now. The one he calls Lal. He’s not quite as street smart, Xeph explains, and he’s always catching him flying too close to the sun, nearly indebting himself to numerous fae. He’s worried sick over Lal’s whereabouts, and asks her to help locate him. She mentions that, in return, she wants some ingredients to try out more rituals and whatnot, and he accepts wholeheartedly, offering some homegrown ingredients. 

As they shake on it, a man walks into the room. He’s quite small, shorter than her (probably a dwarf? God, and everyone has the nerve to call  her  short). He smiles, coming over to pat her shoulder and say he’s glad she’s awake now. Xephos tells him-Honeydew she assumes-that she’s here to help find Lal, then asks how Lalna, the first of the bunch, is taking things. 

“He’s a bit shaken, poor guy’s feelin’ a bit abandoned.” Honeydew explains, and Xephos’ face falls, fretting over his boy. 

“Do they look the same?” She finds herself asking before she can think if it’s a bit rude to ask. Xeph nods, and she quickly asks if she can see Lalna. If she knows what he looks like, she can better prod the city into giving her the information she wants. It wanted her to do this anyways, so there’s quite the chance that it’ll cooperate. Better safe than sorry, she thinks, as she’s led by the distressed father and...housemate? Spouse? (She can’t really tell) upstairs, to a room, introducing her to Lalna, Lalna to her, and she sits down and asks him about Lal, if he had somewhere he liked to go, stuff he liked to do, something to help her help the city pinpoint his location. He told her as much as he could. They are their own people, after all, it’s rude to assume they’re exactly alike, even if they’re the magical equivalent of twins, triplets really, but she doesn’t mention that.  

She thanks them all for helping her, and promises to do what she can to help find Lal. She goes back downstairs, seats herself with her cup of tea-still nice and warm somehow-and closes her eyes, running through everything she knows, as if getting ready to present an important powerpoint of memories. Which she kind of is. She lets her thoughts rest solely on the lost homunculus, twirling her pen around in her ink-smudged fingers.  Her mind open, she lets the city into her thoughts, showing it all the info she has gathered, and pushes the idea of locating the lost man towards it. The city is impassive, and she worries her lip a little, momentarily thinking she didn’t do as the city wanted.

After a few long moments, information swept over her. She sees darkness, mostly, hears laughter, stone hitting stone, whispered conversations. Just before the magic ebbs away, she is able to glimpse a street, a building, and when she’s aware of her surroundings again, she’s baring her teeth and Xephos, now back in the room with her, hovers like an anxious mother bear.

“Those goddamned garbage boys.” She mutters, rubbing at her face, fresh ink on her hands now smeared. He holds one of his hands with the other, eyes widening.

“They have him? Oh no…” He starts to wring his hands.

“I’ll go get ‘im.” She interrupts, before he can get too worried, “Been meaning to get back at those guys for a bit. “

“What? I couldn’t ask you to do that, you’ve done so much for us already.”

“Good thing I’m not waiting for you to ask.” She stands, stretching. He looks ready to protest more but she just grins at him.

“See you later, then.” He nods, and follows her to the door. She gets a few feet away before she pauses, turns back, and asks for directions out of the neighborhood.

 

~*~*~

 

She finds herself outside an old warehouse. It’s not their residence, the trash house; the city has yet to show that to her that, no matter how much she asks, but it’s supposedly where Lal is. She slinks into a back alley, keeping an eye out for people, looking for a sneaky way in.

The side entrance ends up being unlocked, so she just uses that, but plans out a vent crawling adventure to tell people who ask about it. Crouching behind boxes, she turns her head around, checking for any fae with her eye blind to the mundane.  Happy with what she sees-or what she doesn’t see- she ventures further in, trying to find the dark enclosed space she saw. She opens the doors along the perimeter of the cavernous room, but some were exits (she takes note of them) or empty. 

She huffs in annoyance. That’s all the doors. Where the hell was this man? She rubs her eyes, seeing stars in her left and looks around again, scanning the walls for, what, some vent or door she missed? Hold on a tic, what was that? She does a double take, squinting at a bare stretch of wall. She feels like something’s off about it. There appears to be an odd outline, and she goes closer to inspect. When she does, closing one eye to examine, she can’t see a damn thing. 

It’s when she switches eyes that she discovers the wall’s secret. A door, charmed to be invisible to mortal eye, stands along the wall. She laughs, amused and amazed by finding the little trick.

When she opens the door, she notes that it leads to what appears to be a basement area.  She proceeds carefully. There’s a different style to the stairwell than the rest of the warehouse, and she wonders if perhaps it was never a part of the original building. Maybe a magical addition by the court that took it over?

She gets to the bottom and halts, hearing talking, only one end of a conversation. Sounds like the kelpie. Smells like him too. Scanning the room with her magic eye, she spots something on the far left of the room, a horse shape. She walks along the wall to the right, where darkness can hide her, and she looks on this side of the room, listening to the man talk on the phone.

“Yes, I just gave him the food...Ok, well I may have thrown it at him, but he has it now, does it matter how it went from me to him?..Yeah, alright you son of a bitch, I’m just finishing up here, I’ll be there.” There’s a click, then she hears footsteps, coming closer, and she holds her breath, hiding behind some random junk that’s piled up. The steps thud, loudly, then quieter as he goes upstairs, and she lets out her sigh of relief. 

Once she hears the door close, she goes forward, under the one, dying light that’s managing to still glow while all it’s counterparts stay dark. There’s one door down here, and she opens it, and the man inside lets out a shout of surprise.

“Who the hell are you?” He asks, tense, thinking her a part of the court. 

“Use that tone of voice again, mister, and maybe I  _ won’t  _ help you.” She mumbles, noting his uncomfortable position, tied limbs, the Burger King bag resting tilted on his chest. He shuts up, eyes wide in surprise, and she nods, untying his legs and then his arms. Once freed, he massages his wrists and ankles, rubbed raw from trying to escape. 

“...Thanks. I-” There’s footsteps upstairs, cutting his words short. She holds a purple hand to her lips, motioning to the other side of the room and he tiptoes over, hiding. She closes the door, putting the rope in the closet before retreating with him. The door to the stairs opens, and conversation floats in.

“You sure you saw something, Ross?” She recognises the selkie’s voice, the one who threw the brick at her window.

“I’m sure of it. A woman came in. Smiff says he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but do you trust him to be thorough?” She hears both men laugh, and a shout from further away that makes snicker quietly.

“Watch the door. I’ll go check” And dread fills her, eyes finding Lal’s, finding them reflecting her current emotion. 

“On three, we run past him, got it?” She whispers at him, and he nods.

“One.” The footsteps are getting louder.

“Two.” She can see a blob appear on the stairs, gaze scanning for intruders.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs now. Before she can say  ‘three’, she tenses with a small gasp, falling into Lalna, the city distracting her with the future and past.

 

~*~*~

 

She opens her eyes to check her arms for important things, which are really just a blurry, scribbled purple mess now. Well, so much for those prophecies. She finds herself back at Xephos’ place again, rubbing her aching head. The hell is going on? She can hear talking in the kitchen, low whispers. 

She makes to stand up, but ends up bumping her elbow on a coffee table, nearly knocking over a candle as she does. The voices stop abruptly. Xeph comes out from the kitchen, followed by Honeydew and two Lalnæ. One Lalna and the brown-haired man look both happy and upset, the emotions fighting for dominance of their expressions. The dwarf seems to be radiating only joy and excitement, and the second Lalna seems nervous.

“What’s going on?” She asks, feeling completely lost, standing up cause she feels weird being the only person seated. 

Xephos hugs her, quickly, and it startles her. He thanks her for finding Lal, for helping him escape, and she brushes it off, wondering how the hell they managed to get away. She didn’t remember any of it.  Lal, she assumes cause he’s the nervous one that looks a bit worse for wear, tells her how, when she fell into her trance, he picked her up and slipped past the first fae, snuck past the second (who was pearched higher up in the rafters, staring off into space), and didn’t see the third on his way out. He was able to run a few blocks away and duck into a friend’s home, Lomadia, who was all for helping them, before they could catch up. She saw to it that they returned here safely,  giving different talismans to them to protect them from the foul fae. 

Wow, she says, and the dwarf chimes in to agree.

Lal rubs his hands together, a quirk he picked up from Xephos, and asks her if she would like any help. After she became immobilized by visions as they were escaping and he realized what she was, he says he began to worry. What if that happened and the court snatched her like they had him? Who knows what they could get up to with a seer in their grasp. He says even if it hasn’t happened yet, it could, and he wants to help her out anyways. She helped him big time, and he wants to return the favor.

She asks what he would do, how that would work, would she just call him up like ‘hey, kinda wanna go outside’ and he’d have to come over to be her bodyguard or what?

His eyes widen and he turns his head away, face feeling warm, and mutters that he thought that maybe, if she was ok with it, he could live with her?

Her face feels warm too, even as she retorts that she needs a dinner and a movie first, bub, making him sputter and hide his face, Honeydew laughing and Lalna patting his shoulder.

She lets him simmer in embarrassment for just a moment longer before saying sure, they could try the whole housemates thing, but she reserves the right to kick him out at any time if he starts actin weird. 

Even though they’re basically strangers, she feels a connection to him, a borderline magical connection, most likely due to them saving each other. She can trust this guy. He could have left her to the Garbage Court, but he didn’t. He could not have given a damn about her safety, but he does.

His face brightens, and hers does too, and Lalna makes him promise to visit often, and Xephos makes him repeat that promise a few times, and Honeydew tells them both to not smother the boy, jeeze, he’ll visit when he can, and Lal thanks him.

Nano smiles at the odd group, silently thanking the city for bringing her to them, and immediately regrets it with a slight blush as it sends her an image of them, her arms a purple blur, some smeared onto his hands as well, snuggling on a couch laughing about something or other on the tv. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
